Disclaimer: I’m mad. Partly because everyone else seems to be mad, and the anger is just going to keep feeding into a cycle. But also because…
This post tells me nothing.
It starts by lying to me: “3PV is a huge success!” No, no it’s not. It’s idiotic. People who like 3PV games don’t like it (I’m one of them). People who like MechWarrior/mech sims don’t like it. New players cannot
possibly like it, because in order to maybe show them how to move in the most incredibly roundabout fashion, you’ve gimped them in nearly every other possible manner.
Then it belittles me: “immediate improvement in our target demographic” – Who is this? I thought it was me, a long-time MechWarrior fan willing to pumps literally hundreds of dollars into your game. Maybe I’m misunderstanding. What is an “improvement”? Because I don’t feel improved at all. I’m still seeing Snipelanders, or other PCC/Gauss builds that seem to endeavor to remove any fun to be had in matches where they appear (personal issue, maybe, but it’s shared). I’m still seeing rolf-stomping as the norm in most of my matches, with one team getting creamed, which Elo was supposed to fix (but we all knew it wouldn’t). I’m still not seeing the hot and heavy weapon balancing that was implied at the end of July in your afterthought of a Creative Update. I still don’t feel like you’re trying to communicate with me on an adult level.
The post goes on to talk about things I don’t really care about, and/or already knew: Your charity thing was a success, congrats on that; HSR is getting fixed, yes it’s about time I’m tired of hitting people in the front when I’m shooting their rear CT, it wasn’t like you could get away without doing that. The economy, blah blah blah, this is not EVE I would be hard pressed to care less about it (though those new players you’re trying to attract and retain probably care a great deal).
Then you say something silly. Something very, very, very silly that I am going to jump all over you for. You say, “We’ve seen these type of words frame our messaging in a way that some community members either see this as a promise, or guarantee.”
Now, I want you to go back and read what you posted.
It’s right here. I’ll wait.
Did you read what you said? Good. We read it too. You said ‘never’. This is not nitpicking. This is not ‘reading between the lines’, this not ‘framing a message’. This is you telling us we will never have to do something – it doesn’t matter what it is, or how trivial. We are not privy to your internal meetings, or your design documents, or even your goals for the game (which, according to what a lot of Founders are saying, have changed). We have only what you say to go on: that is all we know for certain. You are Word of God for MechWarrior Online. When staff post something, we have no choice but to believe it. When we hold you to the words you wrote, it is not OUR FAULT if you don’t deliver. If you don’t like that, be responsible and make sure you know what is happening before you post something. Now, things change. Most people get that. When things that people feel strongly about don’t match up between what happened and what you said, and
you know they feel strongly about it, you had better damn well tell them if you’re changing your minds about something you couched in absolute terms.
Why am I hung up on this? Because I feel like you’re trying to dodge it, and sit back and let it all blow over. I seriously doubt it will, if that is your hope: look how long people have been bitching about ECM.
Okay, that’s out of my system. Maybe I can be constructive for the rest of this post. I don’t know.
Let’s talk about MWO’s beta, for a minute. It’s been Open Beta for over a year now. There’ve been a lot of things pushed back, for whatever reason. People are kinda mad. The game is already stagnating. And something that has bugged me for forever is getting dragged to the fore: your community doesn’t feel involved. I have never once felt like a Beta Tester in this game. I have never felt like the community is shaping PGI’s decisions, not even in terms of weapon balance, which I would think would probably be the most responsive thing. In fact, your game feels done, minus all the missing features that are promised.
I’m going to do something silly, now: I’m going to compare this game to Warframe. Warframe is also being developed by a small developer. It, too, is Free to Play. Their community feels a lot more listened to. The developers feel very much in-touch: they answer PMs, they have a community manager who regularly goes around and gathers feedback into bi-weekly hot topics that addresses the community’s concerns. They involve the community directly with game design, asking our opinions on X, or seeking solutions on Y. Their game feels a lot rougher than MWO; you can tell it’s under development and they are feeling their way through it.
MWO on the other hand, feels… mostly finished. You’ve got some bugs in the system, but they are within the realm of what I’d expect to see in a recently shipped title. You seem loathe to throw weapon balance out of whack with experimentation. In fact, you seem to have a very rigid idea of how you want to do this game. You’ve been introducing new systems into play, like Ghost Heat and the new(ish) mech movement, but the former aside, they seem like a pre-planned feature and were slotted in as they were done.
In other words, this feels like Early Access, not Beta. Personally, I would blame this on how remote PGI seems to be. I can go days without an Announcement, months between Command Chair posts. This latest shitstorm is the most activity I’ve seen out of PGI on their own forums in months. It’s far too late to say this now, since Beta is ending in what feels like moments, but in the future, I’d suggest more direct links between the gamers and the game-makers.
I’ll finish with: yeah, I’m mad about 3PV, but not because 3PV sucks or because I have to play with it. I’m mad because you’ve had 8 months since I first mentioned it to get a REAL New Player Experience in here and there’s been little headway. The same {s}crappy Trial Mech system is here, New Players are still getting zero instruction on mech piloting, the MechLab/Frontend UI is still a first draft (but at least that is changing, I’m thankful for that), and there is still no teamwork on these teams beyond my pre-made lance (i.e. voice coms). Honestly, your existing playerbase HAS to be bringing in all their friends, because if I didn’t know anything about MechWarrior, and I took my first step in your game as it is, I’d likely quit after the third match. I would have no idea what I’m doing. And it feels like you are killing your game when you don’t address the issue properly and use this gimped 3PV instead.
And that’s it, I’m done. I’ve got more to say, but it’s just retreading what others have said, and if it hasn’t sunk in by now, it’s not going to. Sorry I got belligerent, but that’s what I feel on the matter and I might as well throw my opinion on the matter around while I’ve got the chance.